Sony is no longer an electronic company.

If BlackBerry and Sony had came together and worked on some new products, like a big screen that does what the PlayBook was supposed to do. The PS5, new tablets something! I would have sold my Samsung TV lol.

I was once a big fan and frequent purchaser of Sony products. But then I learned about them installing root kits on PCs. What scum.

To be fair, this wasn't done at the direction of Sony corporate, but rather by an independent company that Sony had contracted to make certain CDs. Yes, Sony was ultimately responsible, and had to make some preparations, but no Sony execs sat around the boardroom table saying "yes, let's install a rootkit on people's PCs!" At the time, they couldn't have told you what a rootkit even was.

I was a HUGE Sony fan at one time, but when CEO Akio Morita, who led Sony to its peak in the 80s, retired in the early 90s, the new CEOs stopped caring about quality and only cared about expanding the brand into everything. They ended up making a ton of junk (along with some high-quality gear), all with the Sony name on it, and it didn't take too long before the junk pulled down Sony's reputation. Succeeding CEO Nobuyuki Idei obviously thought it would be the other way around, and that Sony's good reputation would help sell the junk.

The other real issue is that Sony correctly foresaw the convergence of electronics and media, but they had relatively limited experience and understanding of software, which became increasingly important, and they kept their hardware engineers and their software teams separated, which meant that Sony's products never had the kind of integration that would have allowed them to fight off other companies, Apple-style. They tried to accomplish that with proprietary standards, but most of those were too expensive and weren't useful or desirable enough to overcome the competition. I can't say enough how badly they botched the software and integration, though. They could have had an unassailable ecosystem where everything "just worked", but they didn't know how to communicate between their divisions well enough.

Akio Morita stood for quality, style, and ergonomics, something most other manufacturers missed, and all of those things were devalued by succeeding CEOs, and so it's no real surprise that the company that once set the standards for electronics is going to be exiting a huge portion of that market. Just because you were #1 doesn't mean you are even guaranteed a place at the table, much less the head seat. When you stop delivering value to your customers compared to the competition, your customers will stop coming to you for goods and services...

To be fair, the only real superiority Blu-Ray has over HD-DVD is the larger storage capacity. But no practical usage has yet to demonstrate a need for that additional storage capability. At least at the consumer media consumption level anyway.

The additional storage capacity was always touted, but it was more of a red herring. For example, the entire Lord of The Rings trilogy can probably fit on one Blu-Ray disc. But it's not done simply because consumers won't pay the same price for one disc with the whole trilogy as they would purchasing the installments separatenely.

One thing I did like about HD-DVD was that when I placed the disc in the player, the DVD started playing nearly instantly. Whereas with Blu-Ray, often you wait longer for the disc to buffer and load (probably due to the deeper compression). Granted it's a minor difference, so that point would probably be nitpicking.

It might have just been my luck, but I always ended up burned by Sony purchases in the past (laptops, AV, etc). The only Sony things I ever had that just worked were point and shoots, but those were rapidly obsoleted by cell phones.

Perhaps, with a slimmer company, they can not store passwords and user credit card details in plaintext?

Another thing that really worries me is the horrible service and experience I've had with ps4. It is down at least once a month and at least once a week I have a serious issue where I can't get a chat party going and everyone has to restart their systems multiple times in order to get it to work.

Some games even have horrible controller lag at times and the batteries on the controllers are not great at all.

I hope they can stick with it, but if they don't have 'back up money' it may be difficult

To be fair, the only real superiority Blu-Ray has over HD-DVD is the larger storage capacity. But no practical usage has yet to demonstrate a need for that additional storage capability. At least at the consumer media consumption level anyway.

The additional storage capacity was always touted, but it was more of a red herring. For example, the entire Lord of The Rings trilogy can probably fit on one Blu-Ray disc. But it's not done simply because consumers won't pay the same price for one disc with the whole trilogy as they would purchasing the installments separatenely.

One thing I did like about HD-DVD was that when I placed the disc in the player, the DVD started playing nearly instantly. Whereas with Blu-Ray, often you wait longer for the disc to buffer and load (probably due to the deeper compression). Granted it's a minor difference, so that point would probably be nitpicking.

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Given that these are digital formats, higher capacity seems like a pretty big advantage to me. Since the LOTR trilogy is 12 hours, I doubt a high bit rate encoding of the entire trilogy would fit on one disk.

Sony's product has always been uncomplete, sometimes too smart and therefore not useful.

The problem is, they don't have a style. They try and combine everything that doesn't match.

In their Vaio, they had pre-installed Vaio software, that they think were smart.. but in real, they were annoying and just made the computers slower. And Vaio was too expensive compared with Macbook. Finally the prices got competitive, but then they sold out the Vaio section.

In their TV's, they have smart features that don't work. They have Skype app, but not internal webcam. They don't even have a button in the remoter for turning off the screen while listening to a music channel. You are marketing about green Eco, but such a simple feature is not possible. Uncomplete.

The Xperia phones was just Android with a ugly Sony user interface until the release of Xperia Z3. The display was the worst in Xperia's.. and you are a tv-manufacture. It took Sony several years to make a phone with features that it's competitors made in 2012. Now finally they made a nice Xperia Compact Z3 phone.. and they want to sell out??

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I owned top of the line VAIO in 2000. The laptop was not designed properly as the base got too hot. The heat would melt the rubber at the base and left marks everywhere which were almost impossible to clean. After that incident I noticed Sony laptops, particularly at the hand rest areas were too hot. Nice looking laptops but lack thought on effect on user after prolonged use

Sad for me to hear. I loved my Sony Walkman, and my Sony Ericsson. I still have a PS2 and a PS3. The PS3 has started acting up so I'm anticipating trying to find another one. Not particularly drawn to the PS4.

I also have a Sony eReader which is fantastic and a Sony Vaio that should be faster than it is (I agree with what another poster said about the Vaio bloatware - very annoying) .

To me, Sony always meant quality electronics. I didn't mind paying a bit more because I knew it would be worth it.

I am fan of Sony products, probably even to the point of being a fanboy.

I'm sad to see it go.

But I agree, most of the product line was getting less than cutting edge and down the drain, so it was increasingly harder and harder to find Sony attractive.

For the past 5 years I found myself unable to buy a (much needed replacement) Sony laptop due to the issues mentioned.

2 Years ago we bought a high end Sony TV that from day one randomly turns itself off. Apparently many other models do the same. Since than, other than promises about firmware updates we received no remedy.

Despite that I still wanted to buy another Sony TV, but after many months of REPEATED unsuccessfull attempts trying to navigate through the Sony website to compare TV Models, I finally came to the conclusion that I shouldn't support this company any more.

Sony got too cocky from 1980 to the mid-2000, thought their Trinitron TVs would continue to rule thus missing early development of LCDs. They were even first to come up with a commercial OLED screen (15") but gave that up and now the Koreans have taken over. Even when they started producing LCD or LED TVs from 2006 to 2009, they priced their sets 30% more than upstart Samsung and LG thinking they still had a captive TV market. What I didn't like about Sony in their heyday was the cost of peripherals and parts. Buying a spare battery for my laptop cost 2.5x more than the competition. Repairing video cameras was also every expensive. Proprietary stuff such as mini-discs was also a huge failure and turned consumers off. As for quality, their Trinitron sets which were of very high quality from 70s to late 90s for some reason turned bad in early 2000. I had two 29" TVs bust after 3 years from 2000 to 2005. I also bought 2 top of the line digital cameras which went bust after a year. I can go on and but Sony just got too cocky and disconnected from the market. And they're still somewhat disconnected from the market. They came up with top of line LED TVs with speakers on the side. Buyers shelling out more than $4k for these sets would likely have a high-end home theatre system so no need for the TV speakers. These speaker TVs are also hard to mount on the wall because of the wedge shape. I loved Sony from 70s to 90s, only products I would buy but the cost of buying parts and repairs made me look at other manufacturers after 2005. Just got fed up. The only Sony product I have now is PS4 which is very good and that's the electronics product Sony is banking on in the future.

Wait, "mid-2000? What year are we in now? Somehow I think I overslept. =0)

I have a z3c that Sony Canada provided to me for 6 months. It's a nice phone...but I've had it about 2 months and the back glass cracked by itself. A quick google search showed I'm not alone. Never dropped it. Babied it because it's not mine. Set it down on a nightstand and when I picked it up 20 minutes later there's a pop and a crack. Not impressed.

I mean, my iPhone 4 was dropped I don't know how many times in cases and not and never so much as chipped let alone broke so this issue annoys me. If I'd bought the phone? I'd be pissed.

It's a sad day that Sony, once a leader in consumer electronics, is leaving these battle grounds.

You see people just want the best value for their dollar, and whether or not that value is delivered is heresay, the fact is, the masses buy what marketing tells them to.

One day, we will realize that this constant drive to outsource in order to make products cheaper is actually a disruptive evil that causes companies to thrive and then die when someone else does it cheaper. While it benefits consumers in some sense, it ruins companies that were genuinely interested in providing a solution for a need and advancing technology. You can say it is the fault of management, but at what point do we factor in domestic economies, and the people employed by it. South Korea has led for awhile, as we praised their cheap and competitive products, but now we see Chinese companies entering and destroying the status quo, because they can pay less to manufacture, and for supplies. As long as we compete based on price, this reality will not change, China will soon raise it's standard of living/wages etc, and a new developing nation will emerge as the kings of low cost. It's the way of the world we have created, because we always want new, cheap and better. The day will come too, when Apple and many other tech darlings will fail, at the hands of China, Brazil, Indonesia, etc. The global economy stimulates the growth of developing nations, which then are able to beat all others because of cost advantages, we will continually witness the demise of our favorite companies because the new kid does it better, faster and cheaper. Since there is a slim hope in hell of globalization dying (apart from a potential WW3 and the annihilation of the connected world) we better get used to it, companies won't last forever because someone else will do it cheaper.

Sony has always given me the impression of a mixed electronics bazaar, with some high quality products, average ones and also junk. But they seemed to lack the ability to instill confidence, because they didn't show consistency. In and out of product lines, abandoned products, proprietary stuff, etc. ...

I wish I hadn't been so. Well, there goes another household name... :-(

Sony has always given me the impression of a mixed electronics bazaar, with some high quality products, average ones and also junk. But they seemed to lack the ability to instill confidence, because they didn't show consistency. In and out of product lines, abandoned products, proprietary stuff, etc. ...

I wish I hadn't been so. Well, there goes another household name... :-(

They'll still be around, just not peddling the things that don't make them money.

I'm wondering if they are dropping their camera division or selling it. The Minolta based Alphas are great as are their professional video products. Having said that, I read somewhere that there was very little cohesion in their various product lines as they all operated in silos. I could see how Apple surpasses Sony in that regard.

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but in Japan this is being reported quite differently.

Sony isn't exiting the electronics business, but spinning off the electronics division into a wholly owned subsidiary. The aim is to separate the electronics division financially from Sony's other core businesses (Entertainment, Insurance) in order to allow the other divisions to show their true profitability on the balance sheets while the electronics division is left to sink or swim on its own merits. Separate from the whole Sony group, the idea is also to allow the electronics division greater autonomy to respond to industry trends.

That said if the electronics company is not profitable it will be forced to exit markets in which it is losing money (mobile) in order to return to profitability, and may fold completely if it doesn't adapt.